Seize Micromoments with Unified Commerce and ServiceProactive engagement that drives sales and loyalty throughout the shopping cycle

Why Unified Commerce + Service is the key to building loyalty

Shoppers have endless options - and less time than ever. Digital brings new possibilities to acquire and engage customers, but finding ways to build profitable growth and lasting loyalty is the new battleground for brands and retailers.

The experience is your new product.

Today’s empowered customers no longer purchase products; they purchase experiences1 from brands they feel confident will deliver on their ongoing needs. Trust and confidence in purchasing make commerce and service go hand in hand. When asked what’s most critical when shopping online, consumers named two things that tied as the most important: getting the best price and the ability to ask questions.2

If a sales transaction is your goal, service is the assist. Create a proactive approach that goes beyond traditional customer service to deliver intelligence-driven conversations that drive to a need at every part of the cycle. This approach helps build shopper confidence and lasting loyalty.

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Service and commerce don’t live at set places in a sales cycle – they’re intertwined throughout the customer journey. Digital commerce has evolved from a siloed IT project to an organization’s primary growth engine. Service has evolved from being a reactionary organization to an AI-powered driver of sales and loyalty. Success in delivering an exceptional customer experience relies on having the agility to stay ahead of evolving shopper preferences and the intelligence to invest in the right places.

Brands who deliver on consumer expectations build loyalty and trust. Retailers who view their website as a digital glue are the ones who dominate – connecting service, knowledge, personalization, account management, and sales in one experience. 45% of product searches in the US start on Amazon3, not just because it’s a reliable eCommerce site, but because it’s a digital hub for all buying and service needs. Amazon encompasses self-service, social feedback, a variety of support avenues and frictionless buying from all devices. Shoppers prefer a model provides those conveniences – and they have come to expect it.

Consumers are eager for relevant messages and help with purchasing – and there are more opportunities for brands to deliver to them. Innovative new technologies like chatbots, AI-driven personalization, video, and voice need to blend with tried-and-true customer experiences like call center, chat, and in-store support. Mobile has made shoppers more comfortable with intelligent “bot” services because of common in-home tools like Siri, Google Home, and Alexa.

Brands: Be sure to focus on service throughout the customer experience. Integrate your technologies and organize your teams to think about how you can continuously drive confidence and sales from the earliest stages of discovery all of the way through retention programs. The effort is worth it.

Gaining customer trust and a loyal base is critical to growing profitably in the ultra-competitive retail world, and excellent customer support is the number one loyalty-earning attribute across Baby Boomers, GenX, and Millenials.4

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How people shop has fundamentally changed: Mobile, micromoments, organic channels

Consumers now create their own customer experience. They determine their preferred ways of interacting with a brand -- and there’s an infinite number of ways they can choose their own adventure. With mobile emerging as the preferred way to interact with brands5, predicting how customers will interact is even more challenging.

Shoppers want to do business with brands that are reliable, flexible, and helpful. 8 in 10 consumers are willing to switch companies due to poor service,6 and irrelevant content contributes to a bounce rate increase 200% on mobile devices over desktop sites.7

Mobile shoppers know what they don’t want more than what they do want.

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When starting a mobile search for a product, 90% of shoppers don’t know what brand they will end up buying.8 Having great customer service embedded in every element of the shopping journey can help them gain confidence in your brand, and close the loyalty loop for future purchases.

It’s difficult to predict how your brand can cut through the competitive noise and boost shopper confidence in the moment. Shoppers rarely sit down and shop in a linear, single-session anymore (searching > filtering > product details > checkout). The majority of shoppers spend their time on mobile9, checking their phones an average of 150 times per day for 1 min 10 secs each time10. Across these sessions are micromoments: tiny, critical points within the consumer journey where you can win or lose a customer.

It is during these bursts of activity that shoppers create their own interpretation of who they should buy from. Because shoppers are simultaneously combining buying and service channels to create their own customer experience, it is creating organic shopping channels. Shoppers compare items and prices on their mobiles while in store, or they may be browsing the website while on a call, or they could even be researching something while messaging a friend on the same topic. Shoppers blend different channels in ways that work for their lifestyle and create unpredictable organic channels in the process. They make purchasing decisions based on who will best deliver on their immediate needs – based on the product itself and the support they can receive.

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So, what do shoppers want?

While mobile-obsessed shoppers may not always know exactly where they’re going to buy from, they always want to feel understood and valued throughout the process.

Over half of digital shoppers miss the personal 1:1 experience that buying from an associate in a store brings. Offering guidance cuts down on frustration and doubt that leads to abandoned carts. And this type of service is directly related to sales: 53% of US online adults are likely to abandon their online purchase if they can’t find a quick answer to their question.11

Support in the research and buying phase not only reduces cart abandonment – it really drives sales. 87% of shoppers are more likely to buy an item recommended by an associate.12 And you have a chance to provide support in more ways than ever with relevant, proactive service.

For brands providing commerce and service experiences during the 150+ daily shopper-driven micromoments, speed is critical. 73% of shoppers say that valuing their time is the most important thing for online customer service.13 When shopping, if it pages take longer than 3 seconds to load, over half of shoppers will bounce (not to mention, SEO results are negatively impacted).14 So not only do you have to deliver relevant, confidence-boosting information and personal guidance – you have to do it lightning fast.

The challenge is balancing how brands deliver and measure success. Shoppers want a mix of the intangible things like confidence and feeling valued, with very pragmatic things like speed, relevancy, and options. Now, brands are forced to add in abstract concepts like customer satisfaction and social trust, in addition to the traditional metrics like sales, order values, engagement, and retired service tickets.

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Service sells: Service in eCommerce removes purchase hesitation

44% of consumers said that having a real person answer their questions is one of the most important features a website can offer.15 Making service an integral part of even the earliest shopping phases combats competing on low prices and margin-gouging promotions. If shoppers know they have help standing by, the most significant hurdles to buying online, lack of confidence and trust, are removed.

Again, shopping (especially on mobile) doesn’t happen in a predictable, linear fashion. However, you can think of the shopping journey in three core phases, and map service elements to them:

• Discovery – “I think I want___.”

• Purchase – “I want to buy___.”

• Post-purchase – “I need help with _____” and “deliver value to me.”

During the discovery phase, a shopper may want to know about product specs, or warranties, or what the return policy may be.

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Parallel to purchasing, shoppers may need help processing a payment, solving a problem with checkout or code redemption – or they may have questions about shipping.

Post-purchase, shoppers may want a delivery status, help with a return or product problem, assistance in setting something up, or have general questions or complaints.

The reality? For retail eCommerce as an industry, the most common reasons people contact the call center are:

AdWeek, “What consumers want most in an online Shopping Experience: Infographic” http://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/infographic-what-consumers-want-most-online-shopping-experience-174564/

Traditional call centers are expensive and poorly rated in terms of customer satisfaction but can be improved with shared data and integrated tools.16

1% to place

order

48% requesting

shipping and delivery detail

27% for product information

13% to make a

return

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Service sells: Bringing it all together

New ways to deliver personalized service is required to remain competitive and build a loyal customer base.

Your organization needs a unified platform to have a central point of customer truth across digital-store shopper behavior, and the tools in place to be able to scale personalized interactions wherever shoppers choose to interact.

Oracle Commerce Cloud was built for fast innovation to adapt to changing customer needs and stay a step ahead of competitors. A part of the Oracle CX Suite, built within a modern SaaS architecture, Oracle Commerce Cloud can deliver on every customer need, in the moment, at scale.

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With Oracle Commerce Cloud, your business can:

Deliver cohesive experiences that drive sales across micromoments

Commerce Cloud is a SaaS eCommerce platform that connects the web, mobile, call center, store, and data from any shopper interaction in one place. With an open API and services-based framework, data from cross-channel behavior, purchase history, and third-party web and social interactions, Commerce Cloud can help you deliver better experiences to the customer, service personnel, partners and prospects. With a mobile-first approach, Commerce Cloud experiences are automatically optimized for shopper-preferred mobile interactions. Shoppers can interact with your brand at any time, via any touchpoint and have a unified, persistent experience.

Increase purchase confidence with AI-driven personalization

Commerce Cloud leverages data to deliver targeted content, recommendations, assistance and merchandising with control for the merchandiser to influence what is returned to known and anonymous shoppers. Audiences personalization allows merchants to set up any number of segments and target content and products directly to them based on demographics, location, history, loyalty status and more. Powerful AI at the core continually optimizes the entire experience – so search, merchandising, recommendations, and service are more targeted and drive desired behavior, even if the shopper is anonymous. But it’s not a black box; supervisory controls allow business users to tune the algorithm so what’s returned is in line with business goals.

Digitize the in-store experience with connected data

Shoppers love personal assistance in stores, and Commerce Cloud offers an integrated Assisted Selling Application to serve shoppers in a brick-and-mortar or pop-up shop experience. Store associates can use their iPad to offer personalized recommendations based on the customer’s profile, behavior, cart, segment(s), and preferences. Associates can take payments directly in the app so shoppers can avoid lines, and process aisle transactions to ship items that may be unavailable in the store to the shopper’s home address.

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Take a smarter approach to commerce with Oracle: Connected data, connected intelligence, connected experience.

Learn more at oracle.com/commerce

Inform call center agents for personalized, high-touch assistance

Commerce Cloud features an integrated call center application, Agent Console, to assist shoppers who want service over the phone. Agents can access shopper carts, assist with transaction questions, initiate returns, issue appeasements, apply promotions, and place orders on behalf of the customer. The agent gets access to a full 360 view of the shopper’s history, profile, preferences, segment(s), loyalty status, and receives push recommendations to help further personalize the experience.

Part of a connected CX Suite

Commerce Cloud is part of the #1 rated Oracle Customer Experience (CX) platform made of marketing, service, sales, loyalty, and content clouds. As needs evolve, adding on elements of the Oracle CX suite provide pre-integrated data and use case flows to link critical pieces of the customer journey together. To add to Commerce Cloud experiences, Oracle Service Cloud solutions can add AI-driven chatbots, live chat, video chat, and Knowledgebase to assist before, during and after purchases.

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Footnotes

1 Forrester Research Inc., “The Rise Of The Empowered Customer,” 2016.

2 Pew Research, Online Shopping and eCommerce Statistics, 2016. http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/12/19/online-shopping-and-e-commerce/pi_2016-12-19_online-shopping_1-04/

3 PricewaterhouseCoopers, “The Total Retail Survey 2017,” 2017. https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/industries/retail-consumer/total-retail.html

4 KPMG “The Truth About Online Consumers,” 2017. https://home.kpmg.com/xx/en/home/media/press-releases/2017/01/what-do-online-shoppers-really-want.html

5, 9 Business Insider, “Mobile Commerce Shopping Trends,” 2016. http://www.businessinsider.com/mobile-commerce-shopping-trends-stats-2016-10

6 inContact, “Customer Experience Transformation Benchmark Study,” 2017. http://www.incontact.com/call-center-resource-finder/incontact-customer-experience-transformation-benchmark-study-2017

7 eConsultency, “Bounce is back! And product pages are to blame,” 2017. https://econsultancy.com/blog/69247-bounce-is-back-and-product-pages-are-to-blame8 Google, “Micro-Moments: Your Guide to Winning the Shift to Mobile,” 2016. 10 Facebook via Social Media Week, Millennials Check Their Phones More Than 157 Times Per Day, 2016. https://socialmediaweek.org/newyork/2016/05/31/

millennials-check-phones-157-times-per-day/

11 AdWeek, “What consumers want most in an online Shopping Experience: Infographic” http://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/infographic-what-consumers-want-most-online-shopping-experience-174564/

12 Retail Touch Points, “87 Percent of Shoppers More Likely to Buy on Associate Recommendation,” 2016

https://retailtouchpoints.com/features/news-briefs/87-of-shoppers-more-likely-to-buy-on-associate-recommendation

13 Forrester Trends 2016: “The Future Of Customer Service,” January 2016.

14 DoubleClick by Google, “The need for mobile speed: How mobile latency impacts publisher revenue,” 2016. https://www.doubleclickbygoogle.com/articles/mobile-speed-matters/

15 Forrester Research Inc., “Making Proactive Chat Work: Maximizing Sales And Service Requires Ongoing Refinement,” 2010.

16, 17 Forrester Research Inc., “Your Customers Don’t Want To Call You For Support,” 2016.

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